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Chennai , Oct. 15

THE Tamil Nadu Government plans to launch missions on textiles and horticulture, and also constitute a small farmers agri-business consortium. The proposed textile mission will identify new thrust areas while the horticulture mission will focus on quality upgradation, market access and essential infrastructure together with technology support.

The Chief Minister, Ms Jayalalithaa, who made these announcements while inaugurating a day-long seminar on "Emerging opportunities - Tamil Nadu" organised by The New Indian Express group here on Wednesday, asserted that the State would achieve an 8 per cent growth rate.

She said the State had embarked on a set of economic reforms that would unleash the growth potential and shake off the shackles of the past. "The purpose of this Tamil Nadu-specific economic reforms package, which is sui generis, is to seek that extra thrust, that extra boost, to enable the economy to accelerate from the present staid rate of 5-6 per cent per year, to the express rate of 8-10 per cent," she said.

The Chief Minister said the recently announced industrial policy would be the motherboard to give the State the speed to usher in the 8 per cent growth rate. With its strengths in the manufacturing sector, especially in automobiles and auto components, Tamil Nadu had an opportunity with a strong upstream impact to tap the anticipated increase in the global trade in auto components. Chennai must push forward as a global hub of the auto and the auto component industries.

Also, Coimbatore, which today accounted for 50 per cent of the country's agricultural and domestic pumpset and motor production and the strong foundry industry, had the potential to develop as the castings hub of the country and even as a global sourcing centre for machine tooling job works, design and prototyping assignments.

Ms Jayalalithaa referred to the State's strengths in the textiles sector, especially the export performance in knitwear and woven garments, and home furnishing, and said the Government would launch a textile mission to boost this opportunity into growth. The Government proposed to set up apparel and modern powerloom parks.

In the post-multi fibre agreement period, the apparel and home furnishing segments needed to be upgraded in terms of quality, design and range to tap international markets. The State had the potential to attract international retail chains to source their textile purchases from here.

The other areas that provided growth opportunities were biotechnology, in which the State had taken a number of initiatives, and the construction industry.

The Chief Minister said the Government had taken steps to set up agri-export zones for various horticulture crops. The proposed Tamil Nadu Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium would promote product ideas, support entrepreneurs, promote a dialogue between commercial banks, farmer-entrepreneurs, product information providers, technology providers and logistics planners so that the new projects based on these emerging opportunities could fructify quickly.

Ms Jayalalithaa highlighted the Government's initiatives on IT and IT-enabled services and the State's aim to become a major player in the ITES sector. Just like business process outsourcing, she felt that the next big opportunity would come from healthcare outsourcing, which Chennai, being the healthcare capital of India, was well equipped to take advantage of.

Mr Garry Jacobs, Business Consultant, Mira International, US, wanted massive training and demonstration programmes to be conducted for farmers to impart the latest crop production and water management techniques.

Crop productivity could be appreciably increased by providing better soil nutrition. There was also a need to promote computerised vocational training on a large-scale throughout the State and also accord top priority to develop agro-based energy.

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